The movement of this novel is frankly a miracle, but a natural one—like the graceful flight of a bird, gliding along a path you couldn’t trace if you tried. I can’t imagine how the author conceived of this structure or had any idea where she was as she was creating it. But the more I read, the more impressed I became at her gently insistent exploration. This is a book so assured and confident that it gradually teaches you how to read it. Hinnefeld moves again and again through the lives of Tom, Addie and Scarlet, revisiting the same events, letting details slowly accrue, building our understanding of these characters and their complicated friendships. A certain degree of suspense builds up, but that’s not really the point. In Hovering Flight is as quiet as twilight and just as lovely

The Washington Post

Alongside eloquent riffs on birds and the natural world, Hinnefeld has composed a pair of contained but rich coming-of-age stories..

The San Francisco Chronicle

JOYCE HINNEFELD

IN HOVERING FLIGHT

#1 Indie Next Pick

At 34, Scarlet Kavanagh has the kind of homecoming no child wishes, a visit back to family and dear friends for the gentle passing of her mother, Addie, a famous bird artist and an even more infamous environmental activist. Though Addie and her husband, ornithologist Tom Kavanagh, have made their life in southeastern Pennsylvania, Addie has chosen to die at the New Jersey home of her dearest friend, Cora. This is because the Kavanagh’s ramshackle cottage is filled with too much history and because, in the last ten years or so, and for reasons that are not entirely clear, even bird song has seemed to make Addie angry, or sad, or both. Now, in their final moments together, Scarlet hopes to put to rest the last tensions that have marked their relationship.

Through tender conversations with Cora and Lou, another of Addie’s dear friends, Scarlet slowly comes to peace with her mother’s complicated life. But can she do the same with her own? Scarlet has carried a secret into these foggy days - a secret for Addie, one that involves Cora, too.

In its structure and style this novel follows in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf, Harriet Doerr, and Carol Shields: musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld’s own.

This morning’s scene is a familiar one: Cora at the small table on the screened porch in back, glasses perched on her nose and paper spread in front of her, distractedly petting Lucy, her old collie, who’s flopped down at her feet. For as long as Scarlet can remember Cora has been gray, her hair cut sensibly short. She

Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the acclaimed novel, In Hovering Flight. Her work has appeared in The Denver Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, 13th Moon, the anthology Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry from The Writers Community, and other publications. Her short story collection Tell Me Everything (University Press of New England, 1998) received the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction. She is an Associate Professor of English at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA